570 
REMARKABLE FOUNTAINS. 
as full grown rushing springs, each of which at no great 
distance off becomes a large river. I have heard of this 
remarkable mound two hundred miles distant on the south- 
west. Again three hundred miles distant on the south 
Mr. Oswell and I heard that the Upper Zambesi or Lainbai 
rose at (this) one point. Then intelligent natives men- 
tioned it one hundred and eighty miles off on the east, and 
again one hundred and fifty from it on the northeast, ami 
also in the Manycma country one hundred miles north- 
northeast. intelligent Arabs who have visited the mound 
and fountains spoke of them as a subject of wonder, and 
confirmed all my previous information. I cannot doubt 
of their existence, and I have even given names by anti- 
cipation to the fountains whose rivers I know. 
But on the next point, which if correct, gives these foun- 
tains an historic interest, I speak with great diffidence, and 
would fain apologize for mentioning, on the dim recollec- 
tions of boyhood, and without a single book of reference, 
to hazard the conjecture that these fountains rising to- 
gether, and flowing two north into the Nile, and two south 
to Inner Ethiopia, are probably the sources of the Nile 
mentioned to Herodotus by the Secretary of Minerva in 
the city of Sais in Egypt. The idea imparted by the words 
of the ancient historian was that the waters of the sources 
welled up in unfathomable fountains and then parted, half 
to Egypt and the other half to Inner Ethiopia. 
The ancient traveller or trader who first brought the 
report down to Egypt would scarcely be so precise as to 
explain of waters that seem to issue from nearly one spot 
flowed on to opposite slopes of the watershed. The north- 
east fountain, Bartle Frere’s, flows as the large river Lu- 
fira into Komolondo, one of the four large lakes in Webb’s 
Lualaba. The centre line of drainage then, that on the 
northwest of the mound, Young’s (Sir Paraffin) fountain 
flows through Lake Lincoln, and as the River Lomatuo 
joins Webb’s Lualaba before the fourth large lake is formed, 
of which the outflow is said to he into Petlieriok’s branoh, 
